There’s an interesting article over at the Ithaca Journal that highlights three high school athletes who have disabilities who are participating in mainstream sports in the small upstate New York town of Waverley. One of the kids is a legally blind student named David Briggs who is both a placekicker on the football team and a member of the track squad. I am so excited about this I can’t make the verbs and nouns go into the corral.
You see, I was a high school kid in upstate New York who wanted to be on the track team. They let me practice for a couple of weeks–even gave me a uniform–and then they called me into the Principal’s office where I was told in summary fashion that I couldn’t be on the track team because of the terrible risk I presented for the school’s insurance liability. I was crushed. I tried to argue my case. I asked why the school’s insurance liability was any different when I was running around a track as opposed to walking down the stairs in a student stampede between classes. The Principal (who didn’t like me because of course I needed accommodations and his crummy school hated providing accommodations, even simple ones like large print tests) told me that “it was out of his hands” etc. etc. and of course I got him with the old zinger (for I was the child of academics) saying: “Well yes, but didn’t Eichmann say that?” (Even at 16 I knew that there’s a cut off point–if the sub-Cartesian numb-skull is going to hate you then so be it, you might as well take your parting shots.)
The really painful part of the story happened about two days later as I was walking home from school. The track coach who was also the student driving teacher. pulled up alongside me with a car full of students, leaned out the window, and demanded I return my uniform. And of course there was laughter from the back of the car.I walked home feeling approximately four inches tall. I had to climb the sheer walls of gutters and pavements.
This story in the Ithaca Journal makes me feel like running in my high school track suit, which I never returned in case you’re wondering.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
There was an article some time ago in our local paper about a boy with cerebral palsy, who uses crutches; but still plays on the school SOCCER team… He had to petition the school board to b permitted to play.
Another boy I read about has only one leg, and plays catcher for his (none disabled) local Little League team… He hops around the bases on one foot. He had cancer as a baby, and the whole leg was removed to the hip.
Our school wanted me fore the wrestling team, because they knew I did judo, but I refused, because the coach was a jerk… I’m still in judo, and a black belt instructor.
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I’m glad you didn’t return the track suit. Loved the sentence about not being able to corral the nouns and verbs and the parting shot to the principal. Always missing from others’ “you can be anything you want to be” rhetoric is a short addendum–if someone doesn’t force you to stop.
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Steve, I can reinforce progress has been made in not just Ithaca but elsewhere. I was skiing this weekend in New Hampshire. There is a large adaptive program at Loon Mountain and it is exceptionally well run and organized. Over a period of three days I observed many people with a myriad of disabilities skiing. What struck me though was all the young people, especially those that were paralyzed. They were not only gifted skiers but obviously a well accepted and integrated part of the ski community. Thus I hope your experience in high-school is a thing of the past. I had a similar experience in high-school but do not regret it too much. It made me a hard ass and taught me to assert my civil rights. It is odd you should relate the above story because I was told by one of the young paralyzed people I met over the weekend that I was an “old school crip”. I love this phrase as it denotes respect and acknowledgment that we “old school crips” have forced society to change.
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